Bekker's Blog by Scott Bekker, Editor in Chief

The Nokia Lumia 900, the Windows Phone that is shouldering the smartphone market share dreams of both Microsoft and Nokia, will come to the United States on April 8.

In blogging about the release date this morning, AT&T added two twists: The device will be available in white and the price is extremely aggressive at $99.99 with a two-year contract.

Nokia Lumia 900

"Nokia Lumia 900 won the Best of CES award for smartphones and is more than just a killer phone at a killer pricepoint," wrote Jonathan Church, AT&T director of product marketing management. Michael Stroh, Microsoft's main Windows Phone blogger, also took up the pricing talking point, calling the phone "an astounding deal."

The Lumia 900 will be the third of Nokia's Windows Phones to be released as the Finnish company relaunches its smartphone line around the Windows Phone-first strategy, as opposed to the homegrown smartphone operating systems the company had previously ridden to first place in the worldwide smartphone market. The decisions have caused the phonemaker to get hammered by investors, although it's still far too early to call the strategy either a success or failure.

The previous flagship, the Lumia 800, was available only outside the United States. The Nokia Lumia 710 came to the United States via T-Mobile in January. While inexpensive at $49.99, the Lumia 710 (like the Lumia 800) had no front-facing camera, an odd design choice given Microsoft's emphasis on Microsoft Lync and its acquisition of Skype.

The Lumia 900 does have the front-facing camera, along with an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with a Carl Zeiss wide-angle lens. The device will also support Nokia's new Lumia-specific app, Creative Studio, which applies and displays photo effects to the viewfinder prior to taking a picture. Other features of the Lumia 900 include 4G LTE support, a 4.3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack Display and a 1.4 GHz Snapdragon processor. The device comes with 16 GB of memory, a limitation compared to the industry standard iPhone 4S, which is available with 16, 32 or 64 GB.

Pre-orders for the Lumia 900 will be available to qualified business customers with wireless service discounts starting March 30. The cyan and black versions of the Lumia 900 will be available in AT&T stores on April 8, and the white model will be available on April 22.

Also on April 8, AT&T will begin selling the massive HTC Titan II, the second generation of the 4.7-inch Windows Phone. The new version features a 16-megapixel camera and is priced at $199.99 with a two-year contract.